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Merge multiple XML files from command line

Asked 2012-01-25T14:16:29.853
16

I have several xml files. They all have the same structure, but were splitted due to file size. So, let's say I have A.xml, B.xml, C.xml and D.xml and want to combine/merge them to combined.xml, using a command line tool.

A.xml

<products>
    <product id="1234"></product>
    ...
</products>

B.xml

<products>
  <product id="5678"></product>
  ...
</products>

etc.

xml command-line merge
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Low-tech simple answer:

echo '<products>' > combined.xml
grep -vh '</\?products>\|<?xml' *.xml >> combined.xml
echo '</products>' >> combined.xml

Limitations:

  • The opening and closing tags need to be on their own line.
  • The files need to all have the same outer tags.
  • The outer tags must not have attributes.
  • The files must not have inner tags that match the outer tags.
  • Any current contents of combined.xml will be wiped out instead of getting included.

Each of these limitations can be worked around, but not all of them easily.

answered 2012-07-03T16:18:31.740

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